HALO Talks

Alex Dzierbicki has held a variety of positions in the  hospitality and HALO sectors. At one point, he owned three gyms, worked in private equity, moved on to the franchise space, and now works for the highly regarded Cultivate Advisors, where all advisors must possess a minimum of at least 10+ years of business ownership.  When asked about the importance of perspective, he states, "The broader that is, the better you will be able to form commonality and pattern recognition skills. So saying, 'Hey, I've seen how the big boys play. I've seen how the little ones play. I've seen how the winners, losers, various intention have walked these notions out. I can say, Oh A, B and C, are common factors . . . so this is what I think is likely.' What are we doing to address these problems? How can we peak around these corners?" It's critical to ground businesses in data--to take something from the more "etherial" to the more concrete. He discusses how an engagement works with Cultivate, what the process entails (the need

Brandon Cullen is a former professional hockey player and one of the Founder's of MADabolic. (Fun fact: MAD stands for Momentum Anaerobic Durability.) Along with his partner Kirk Dewaele, "The duo founded MADabolic after noticing a hole in the fitness market. There were no high-quality group fitness training systems for people who prioritize strength, value structure, and demand results…everyday people, and people past their sport looking to age athletically…people, it turned out, like them." The MADabolic brand has been quietly, but slowly and surely expanding. . .but doing so mindfully and cautiously. He chats with Pete about their trials and tribulations of becoming a franchisor early on, managing franchisees (and marketing to find the right franchisors.) Their goal is to get to "200 successful units" in the next 5 years. He says, "We just started noticing that different people were coming in the doors. We removed the scoreboard, we removed the barbell, we started play playing around with a lot more work-t

April Berg is the Co-Founder & Customer Experience Director of the Aruna Project, an incredible organization which empowers women through employment. The Project, "Creates lifelong freedom marked by holistic care for victims of human trafficking. Products are crafted in freedom by skilled Artisans who are finding their voice, experiencing independence and growing with a sisterhood of others who have overcome." They've employed over 120 women since they began in 2015 (products launched in 2018) with 60 women currently employed, and they look to bring on 3 new women per month. Their training center serves over 3,000 in the redlight area in India which they started from. "Will never employ a woman unless we can fully sustain her ongoing," states Berg. She continues, "Everything that we create . . . was made by women who we've helped set free and have overcome quite awful situations. We provide sustainable employment through holistic care so they're fully sustained. And then our products are sold and marketed

"My purpose is to help others," states Roger Harvey succinctly. This long time, highly-seasoned HALO executive served as the COO of Crunch for 13 years (from 3 studios to 27 in 1993-2006), as a COO and CEO in the boutique space, a consultant to a good number of brands, and most recently as the CEO of New York Sports Clubs. He was charged with the "minor" task of taking a 50 year organization (from 186 gyms going in, to 68) out of bankruptcy--while in the middle of the pandemic--pre vaccines! "I walked into a full on crisis," he states. This was an utterly Herculean task on every level with literally 2 days notice, but as anyone who has met Roger knows, this sort of thing doesn't phase him. He continues, "I opened [the interview with NYSC] with the fact that my purpose is to help others, and it would make me really bad at fulfilling my purpose if somebody asked for my help, they then explain what they need help with, but I say no, because I think it's too difficult!"  He has honed what he calls his Level 4or A

Matt Spielman is Founder of Inflection Point Partners and author of the newly released book, Inflection Points-How To Work and Live With Purpose. (Check out a quick one sheeter here as well.)  Matt notes, "I transitioned from Executive to Executive Coach . . . and the part that really drew me in was seeing the people on the team grow, develop, thrive, giving them stretch opportunities, the promotion discussions and . . . just giving feedback in a constructive way. That was the stuff that really drew me in." He discusees his own (rather inspirational!) career journey, what he went through himself at 44, finding sources and drains of energy, some of the concepts behind what he calls the Game Plan System ("you can't goal set your way out of an emotional rut"), and more.  He goes on to chat about the effect COVID has had (in both positive and negative ways) on people's lives and career paths, and how he built his own coaching practice from scratch. (It was a slow, steady climb, and now Spielman counts executives

Struct Club brings structure to music-inspired fitness instruction. By providing software for gyms, studios, and their instructors, Struct Club's simple app & unrivaled programming database streamline the entire process of delivering impeccable group exercise classes.     In 2018, Amira incorporated Struct Club out of Harvard Business School, where she both got her MBA and began teaching indoor cycling classes at their gym. Coming from a prior career in enterprise software, she found that instructors lacked a modern tool to 'hit play & go' with facility-standard workout plans, playlists, and coaching scripts.    "There should be an app for this," she thought. Class intelligence should be shared, and even predictive of individual styles based on personal preferences. Pollack continued, "Everybody deserves a great experience. That's what we want to provide as an industry. Losing 60% of our clients in one week, for example? That's just a disastrous business problem."   Today, Struct Club's app is known b

"Red light therapy has been around for 60 years but 'more' isn't always better," states Perry Kamel, the CEO of DNA Vibe, the innovative new company revolutionizing red light therapy and the way its administered. "More" was the direction the industry went down (and arguably is still going down) once people realized the modality had positive effects. "It's absolutely about precision, not power . . . and too much could be harmful," Kamel continues.  With some recent coverage on the Today Show and over one hundred professional and Olympic athletes using the DNA Vibe technology, the company is growing exponentially both on the business to consumer, and the business to business sides.  Better still? The company is veteran owned, 100% of the product is constructed in Colorado, and they've managed to do so at a cost (and quality) that beat everything they found when (initally) looking abroad.  This is a highly engineered, very technically advanced product that is challenging the way red light therapy has traditional

Virginia Carnesale is the founder of Shop Stage. Her story of surviving breast cancer is incredibly inspirational for others going through what she did, and was the push needed for starting Shop Stage. Her inspiration was based on her experiences as a patient, and her life long background in retail. While the company is only about five months old as of this podcast (Sept 2022), she and her team are doing incredible work helping other women take the guess work out of their cancer treatments, have non-profit partnerships with three organizations, and have 60 brands on their platform. "You really do need community to support you to get through this. And it's not just friends, family and loved ones--of course, they're hugely critical--but if you don't have anybody in your inner circle that's been through this before, it's hard for them to know how to relate or how to support you." "There really is no substitution for connecting with other survivors. I was so fortunate to get connected with other women who had gon

As a very active kid, Bryan Clay (Founder of the fast-growing franchise Eat The Frog Fitness and 2008 Olympic decathlon gold medalist), found himself with an ultimateum by his Mom: Track and field or swimming . . . and he chose track and field because, "There was no way I was going to wear a Speedo!" he jokes. Clearly, it turned out to be the right choice. "The track became my sanctuary," he states. Clay went on to gain a Fulbright scholarship, compete in the 2004 Olympics, won the gold in 2008 in Beijing, and has been at the top of his game in the athletic world. How then, do you go from that-where every part of your life is controlled and revolves around your fitness-to the craziness that is entrepreneurship? It's not easy! Clay continues, "One of the hardest things about going from professional athlete to entrepreneurship is that when you're a professional athlete, everything revolves around you. If I need to get better, I have to put in the time. I fix it, I become obsessive about it until I have it perf

Daniel Tobon is a self-described "hard 48." He joined the military at age 17 immediately after high school and served for 7.5 years. Due to a serious back injury, he later went on to get the, "most boring job I could" and became a lawyer. (Ha!)  Tobon currently heads up iVIK Holdings. iVIK is a 100% USDA and EU certified organic cannabis production facility. They're also white-label, vertically integrated, and run a highly successful direct-to-consumer brand, Relevium. After selling his prior company to private equity, Tobon (also a duel citizen with Colombia) realized the incredible opportunity presenting itself in cannabis. He "had a front seat on the war on drugs" growing up in Colombia (one of the reasons he came to American initially) and saw the incredible effects of the plant on many levels, but especially for veterans suffering from PTSD.  "We collect more tax revenues from cannabis than alcohol,"  he states. "But it's critically important to get the cost down to commodity levels. A dry gram costs aro

Alessandro Biggi & Francesco Brachetti are best friends since college and grew up in Italy. They started Avocaderia- the buzzy new restaurant (now with 4 locations.) They have far from the "typical" background of hospitality entrepreneurs. Both studied and worked in the finance world but eventually, Alesandro came to the idea of,"Healthy comfort food that's good for you but enriched with healthy fats which could be cheese, almonds and so on. I realized that it was really hard to find healthy food. . . so I started playing with the idea of creating delicious avocado based salads and dishes. I shared that with Francesco who was living in Mexico, in the country of avocados!" The two self-funded their first two locations and not having any background in hospitality turned out to be a positive. In finance parlance, they aimed to create an MVP  ("minimum viable product") and did exactly that using, among other things, Instagram to create community and assess demand! "In our case, we didn't know anything, so we

"Remedy Place is the world's first social wellness club," states Dr. Jonathan Leary, Founder. There is an incredible amount of buzz around this company, and for good reason! Leary has been working on this concept for a solid 10 years, and their new location in New York City's Flatiron district just recently opened. (Their first is in West Hollywood, CA.)  "It's a whole entire club that's centered around holistic self-care, but it's made to enhance your health and your social life at the same time. So it's not like a spa where you go and isolate yourself in each room. Although everything in the club you can do by yourself, we'd rather you do it with others," he continued.  Leary and Pete discuss the (now very popular) workout recovery space and where it's going, sourcing talent and building out a staff, the common (but wrong!) perception of "oh, you're skinny so you must be healthy," creating authentic relationships with customers and patients, (lead by example!) the long term plans for Remedy Place, Jonathan'

Jeff Riney is currently the COO of the beautiful new St. James Club and has been in the industry since 1995. He got into the HALO sector, "By chance. . .and to avoid your classic 9-5 job. I started with selling memberships." Years later, the flagship St. James Club is a monster, 450,000 square feet facility with literally everything under one roof. It's a hybrid member/non-member model with all branded concepts developed in-house.  "From a branding standpoint, Crunch and Equinox were really the first big brands in the industry to help understand the relevance of a customer's relationship with a brand versus a commodity. We've all seen, in the last decade or so, this bifurcation of the industry from the HVLP sector up to the high touch, high price point. What I've learned is it's hard to play at the higher price point! That's why there's less consumers there, but there's also less players because it's much harder to deliver on." Jeff discusses the differences he's experienced management-wise over the years. (S

After playing Gaelic games professionally for nearly 15 years, JP and Dermot started Gaelic Performance, a firm which sold equipment into the highly niched Gaelic sports market. Sandbags and other products didn't really hold up and they ended up developing a much more sturdy and versatile product called the RAM and started RAMfit (Recycle And Move.) There's a heavily green ethos to the company and the product is made from recycled tires (which are heavily regulated in Europe) and steel from companies based in Ireland.  "Looking back on it now, we were that entrepreneur who thought we can go our own way. One big thing we learned from the Spartan Race partnership was that, yes, while we have a very good product, at the end of the day, we're not going to revolutionize the world of fitness with it. So what benefits us is actually going out there and seeking these partnerships. That's what has accelerated our growth and which will help our growth in the future," states McArdle. JP and Dermot discuss their fantasti

In this episode, we're pleased to present an informative and enlightening interview with Ben Ludwig, a growth pastor, and a fitness coach with a rather unique background.    "If you ask most people that are in ministry, that was never their original plan. For me, fitness was always my 100% go to. I started as a person trainer back in the day and worked my way up just through my passion for helping people. That's what I thought my career was going to be forever," states Ludwig. Ben and Pete discuss parallels between his career in the ministry and fitness, the growth of F45 in the United States and how the brand will continue to evolve, (despite it's most recent troubles,) Ben's thoughts on growth, mindset, and business, and more. Click here to download transcript. 

Who doesn’t love good, healthy food? Better still, who doesn't love the option to have it delivered while also knowing that the restaurant (not Big Tech!) is getting their fare share of the profits. Today’s episode of HALO Talks is made livelier and healthier by Josh Morgan, the founder of Sesame Order, a new marketplace created by a restaurant veteran squarely with other restaurant professionals in mind. Currently in approximately 250 restaurants in the NYC area, Sesame is still in beta and testing carefully, but by all signs, reception from both the restaurants and the consumers has been very positive. "Sesame came about in a post-COVID world. We started to think about how fundamentally challenging being in the restaurant business is. And even when times are good, it's hard--but in the face of things like COVID we came to the realization that we needed to make some changes. Sesame was a response to the challenges that we've had as restaurant operators fighting against the aggregators in Silicon valley and b

A former college athlete who moved into a fitness career (and became a pro MMA fighter!) industry veteran Emre Ozgur is now the Founder and CEO of a buzzy new brand with an extremely unique concept, Safe Sweat.  "When we started really working on this, initially it was a concept for the pandemic, but the reason we decided to push forward is because there is a very large demographic of underserved people that have been saying for years, 'I don't want to work out in the social environment. I don't want to do a class. I would rather work out on my own. And that's how we got to the safe sweat concept.'" states Ozgur.  The numbers bear this out. Currently based in Vancouver with aggressive plans for growth, they're seeing an average of $188 per unit with the lowest price of $150. "It is clear that people will people will pay a premium to have their own, private space with high end equipment, as well as digital content," he states.    Their unique concept is first to market, highly profitable, and easy to run. But

Recorded in NYC at the Boutique Fitness Solutions Summit in April 2022, Katy Richardson, Founder of Neighborhood Barre, a (barre studio franchisor) talks with Pete Moore about her (briskly growing) portfolio of 23 studios, which still remain self-funded. Katy was also the recipient of the highly regarded Pinnacle Business Award in the Young Entrepreneur category in Knoxville, TN. As a former cheerleader who suffered a severe accident, Katy got into yoga and other lower-impact modalities to aid in her recovery. She did not have an extensive barre background. "I didn't want to be influenced by what someone else was doing necessarily. I wanted to find the style of barre that connected the most with me and then research it. I had that yoga teacher training background and started to build my own program without too much outside influence . . . you definitely don't have to have everything figured out before you get started," she states. She talks about what she did to get through COVID and some of the lessons learn

Monique Nadeau is the Co-Founder of EatLove a company whose, "best-in-class technology delivers personalized, on-demand meal guidance that adapts to all lifestyles and food preferences and helps guide the 200 decisions we make around food each day." As a former investment banker, Harvard University graduate with an MPA in Economic Policy, Nadeau is well aware of the critical importance of nutrition and the obesity crisis currently facing America. "I've always been attracted to people who want to solve the hardest problems, even though it could take many years to actually come to fruition. Did you know, for instance, that the number one reason for rejection to the military is actually obesity," she states.  EatLove has 7,000 dietician approved recipes, 6,000 healthy restaurant options, AI to crunch the data, and more. It's a product that's "created to drive behavior change, it has the ability to process tremendous amounts of data, and it feels like we're just at the beginning," says Nadeau. She and Pete also

InTouch Technology is a business very familiar to the Milkie family. As the current CEO, Mary spent 15 years on the vendor / CMS side, and has about 30 years total in the sector. She owned health clubs prior and worked in nearly every position. InTouch recently secured additional investment capital and is now branching out into the consulting and call center side. Mary provides some very valuable intel into the changing landscape of the CRM world. Regarding pricing she states, "I've been in the industry for about 30 years and I've said it's a race to the bottom as far as price goes, a race to zero. I just feel like we've really hurt ourselves sometimes . . . if we are focusing on customer service and helping people get results and offering people, things that they need to obtain their goals, I just think that's a better value and better option than going into a club where there's no hand holding at all."  There's a lot of valuable takeaways in this one! Listen now to learn more. Click here to download transc